In wet etching of an oxidized silicon film on a semiconductor, hydrofluoric acid or its mixture with ammonium fluoride is used as an etchant. Ammonium fluoride is used for controlling an etching rate and for stabilizing the etching rate during the whole etching time. Usually, 5 parts by weight or more of a 40% aqueous solution of ammonium fluoride is used per part by weight of a 50% aqueous solution of hydrogen fluoride. Such a large amount of ammonium fluoride increases surface tension of the etchant comprising hydrofluoric acid so that its wettability to various films on the silicone substrate such as silicon dioxide and resist films is greatly deteriorated. Because of such the deteriorated wettability, the etchant does not penetrate into very thin gaps formed in very minute and complicated patterns of an integrated circuit, which causes various troubles such as incomplete etching. The wafer must be, therefore, pretreated with alcohol or a surfactant solution to improve its wettability with the etchant.
To eliminate the troublesome pretreatment of the wafer, it may be proposed to reduce the surface tension of the etchant by the addition of a surfactant to the etchant. Since ammonium fluoride, however, makes the solubility of the surfactant much worse, the kinds of the surfactants to be added to the etchant are very few.
In order to solve these problems, Japanese Patent Kokai Publication (unexamined) No. 53980/1983 describes an etchant composition comprising fluorine-containing diamine type surfactants. This composition, however, has several drawbacks. The composition has a low surface tension just after preparation, but after a long standing time, the composition separates into two phases. For instance, the surfactant concentrates into a surface layer of the composition and into an interface between the composition and a container so that the inner portion of the composition has an increased surface tension. When the composition is separated, the inherent effects of the addition of the surfactant disappear and some parts of the silicon dioxide film of the semiconductor are not completely etched. Even if the composition separates, the surfactant is redispersed by mixing and the surface tension of the etchant can be restored. However, the mixing is troublesome.
As a result of an extensive study, it has now been found that when certain specific fluorine-containing carboxylic acids or their salts are used as surfactants for an aqueous etchant composition comprising hydrogen fluoride and ammonium fluoride, they are transparently dissolved in the composition and do not cloud the composition. Further, they sufficiently lower the surface tension of the etchant composition and the obtained composition does not separate and has a constant surface tension throughout the composition after long standing.